Читать книгу Dæmonologia Sacra; or, A Treatise of Satan's Temptations. In Three Parts онлайн

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[2.] Secondly, Satan endeavours to make one sin an engagement to another, and to force men to draw iniquity with cords of vanity. Agur notes a concatenation in sins, ‘Lest I steal, and take the name of God in vain,’ Prov. xxx. 9. Adam sinning in the forbidden fruit, and proclaimed guilty by his conscience, runs into another sin for the excuse of the former, ‘the woman that thou gavest me,’ &c. David affords a sad instance of this, the sin with Bathsheba being committed, and she with child upon it, David to hide the shame of his offence, (1.) Hypocritically pretends great kindness to Uriah. (2.) When that served not, next he makes him drunk, and, it may be, he involved many others in that sin as accessories. (3.) When this course failed, his heart conceives a purpose and resolution to murder him. (4.) He cruelly makes him the messenger of his own destruction. (5.) He engageth Joab in it. (6.) And the death of many of his soldiers. (7.) By this puts the whole army upon a hazard. (8.) Excuseth the bloody contrivance by providence. (9.) In all using still the height of dissimulation. Satan knows how natural it is for men to hide the shame of their iniquity, and accordingly provides occasions and provocations to drive them on to a kind of necessity.